PEAK AWARDS: LABELS AND TAGS

Award of Excellence - 2009
Western States received a 2009 PEAK Award of Excellence for the beautiful gold and blue La Dolce Vita wine label. The label tells more than a story of beauty; it illustrates how Western States brought solutions and cost savings to this customer.

La Dolce Vita had two obstacles to overcome: getting the hot foil stamped embossed product they’d been using to adhere well to their bottle; and getting this label to work well with their applicator. Western States worked with La Dolce Vita to determine that a dull gold label material with a slightly lower reflective property was better suited for their applicator. We also helped them save money by creating a cold foil transfer and embossed label with our specialized, internal embossing process. This eliminated the need for the costly steel tooling die that La Dolce Vita had been using. After several test runs, this customer was delighted with the award-winning results.

Click here to view the original article


Grand Winner - August 2008
PEAK judges gave oohs and ahs to this cold-foil stamped, embossed label, just like they imagined Western States' customers doing while opening the 100th anniversary piece that held the labels.

Western States' Creative Director Renee Berger was challenged by the company president to top the "wow" factor of a metal box the company gave away in 1995. While searching for a centennial piece online, she found a period letter holder and sketched up some ideas in Adobe Illustrator. Engineers converted the drawing to CAD and within a year, the company had a viable design for a one-of-a-kind letter holder. In each of the 10,000 packages, Western States showcased the company's capabilities with letterhead, envelopes and the gold labels to seal each missive.

The labels were special, Berger said, because it was the first time the company had used a conventional die to do embossing (instead of the flexo plate approximation). It wasn't an easy task, she said, but the challenging registration task of all 95,000 labels won acclaim from the judges. Each anniversary package contained eight fan-folded labels.

Presenting the piece in context, the judges said, was key to a win in this category. It was important to see how the label coordinated with gold relief on the letter holder and hand-applied gold finishing on the envelopes.

Originally from Print Solutions Magazine® August 2008 © Copyright 2008 Print Solutions Magazine. All Rights Reserved. Published by the Print Services & Distribution Association.
Click here to view the original article